It’s one thing to change your position on an issue. It’s another to do so after ridiculing an opponent.
Back in July, when Barack Obama said during a debate that he would be willing to meet with Iranian leaders, unconditionally, Hillary Clinton called his position irresponsible and naive.
Yesterday, in a Canterbury, NH apple orchard, a citizen asked Clinton about that. And, whoopsy-daisy, she has flip-flopped. She said, “I would engage in negotiations with Iran, with no conditions, because we don’t really understand how Iran works. We think we do, from the outside, but I think that is misleading.”
What a difference four months can make.
The full story is here.
Previous Flip-Flop Awards: Mitt Romney John McCain
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That’s an interesting change of position for Hillary.
I think she’s made a good move here. Because it’s desperately hard to make progress on anything without face to face engagement.
It’s all too easy to gush out those macho comments for home consumption, as both the current Iranian and US presidents have done in recent months. But it’s another thing altogether to hold on to tough and uncompromising positions when you’re standing side by side.
If I look back at all the positive developments over recent years in the for far too long intractable conflict in Northern Ireland, they all started with decisions to meet and negotiate.
First the British government met Gerry Adams secretly and finally in public, effectively bringing Sinn Fein into the democratic process.
And finally Iain Paisley agreed to meet Sinn Fein, having for many years refused to sit down at the same table with former terrorists Martin McGuinness and Adams.
It’s hard to relinquish firm positions and principles in taking a risk and swallowing pride and prejudice to meet a bitter opponent.
But it’s amazing just how often that approach brings real results.
This election for President promises to be an incredible experience. But making the right choice is going to take some agonizing research and some deep thinking and involve at the heart of it some real trust. I couldn’t help but notice that the commenter above didn’t address the flip flopping.
The media has made quite an issue of this character flaw in the candidates so much so that I think we, the public, may be losing respect for what this changing of position actually means. I don’t think it says as much about the candidate as it does about the electorate and what they are willing to swallow in order to vote in their choice.
In some quarters, http://www.alternet.org and http://www.truthdig.com, the progressives are beginning to sound more and more like a third party because they are finding that the top candidates for the Demos are not trustworthy on ending the war.
Where does this leave Hilary, changing positions, that’s where.
I want this war to end, if she can’t promise that then I don’t really care about how important it is to finally elect a woman to the White House.
@roads – Excellent analogy. If she had only replied to the citizen in NH along the lines of, “Y’know,” — she starts so many sentences that way — “I was harsh on him at the time but with reflection, I’ve come to believe he was right.”
Any acknowledgement that she just might have been wrong would have been fine with me. But she has a long history of being incapable of admitting she is wrong and that, to me, is a character issue.
Her flip-flop was surely political. Not only is she still hearing about her 2002 vote to authorize the war in Iraq, her opponents are criticizing her for last month’s vote to label Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. She says it was to gain leverage for negotiations; they say it’s a prelude to an invasion.
Who but Hillary really knows where she’s going on this issue? I wouldn’t be surprised if she has already focus-grouped it.
@rhbee – roads, the commenter above you, is a Brit (and a rather brainy one) who brings a welcome and incisive across-the-pond perspective to many issues here. I don’t think he’d presume to talk about our candidates as we would.
I do think, as noted above, this flip-flop is part of a larger character issue. And while I, too, want an end to war I’ve honestly never thought it was important to have a woman in the Oval Office. It would be great, but I want the best person in there. So far, she hasn’t convinced me she is that person.
Well, we just don’t have such a problem with the concept of flip-flopping over here.
It’s generally interesting and instructive when a politician changes their mind. Because it often means they’ve thought it over and come to a wiser conclusion.
And wasn’t it Winston Churchill who said – ‘Never explain. Never apologise.’ I don’t necessarily agree with him, but that is almost a rule of politics these days that they don’t admit their mistakes.
For all of that, it seems to me an asset to possess the flexibility to live and learn and change your mind and come to a more reasoned view. Hillary’s initial position here was clearly nonsensical by any sane perspective. It’s a shame she got it so wrong initially, yes, but at least she did come round.
In the opening stages of another potentially brewing conflict, at Camp David back in 2002, Tony Blair agreed to invade Iraq.
We might certainly wish he had changed his mind by March 2003. He certainly had the chance. But he fluffed it.
Or perhaps he didn’t want to look like a flip-flopper. Such a shame, that.
But I wish politicians would admit their mistakes; no one is infallible and a bit of humility goes a long way.
Agreed re: Blair at Camp David, although I doubt it would have stopped The Decider from proceeding as planned.